I would like to know before this potentially fucks up my entire project directories.

What does it do to the existing content that was installed with the previous versions? Does it uninstall those as well? Which content directories does it remove? Since I have multiple copies of the default content.

Greener, too. I remember in the days of yore, developers released small updates, patches, etc. Now they all just re-release the software. Makes it much harder on dial-up users (nobody gives a rat's arse about dial-up users though, amirite? Let them eat cake). Now Google's got a hundred zillion servers cranking out CO2 but they're lefties, so none of the "green" lefties know nothin.

The Cartoon Render Option in the Render Settings is definitely not working correctly with 4.5. I spent a few hours during various renders of figures and scenes to confirm if it was messed up.

Currently it isn't applying the Cartoon render to everything in the scene and many objects look the same as if they had been rendered without it. Many of the figures I rendered were just looking the way they would if they were rendered normally in most of the renders I did.

Some scenes I had in 4.0 that used it, had just basic lights and no custom additional shaders are looking very dark and over light in some spots when rendered in 4.5. Details are not viable and the scene doesn't look right at all.

I've attached a bad 4.0 test render I set up inn about 15 minutes a week ago to show some one how the default cartoon render option looked and re-rendered that same test scene in 4.5 and have attached it.

It would be much more useful however if we could do something as simple as change the UV map settings of the shell. That way, we really COULD use it to blend the textures of geografted shapes, or we could use Jepe's M4 bodyhair over an M5/V4Male base texture.

As it's just a projection of the underlying geometry (which is why it is so lightweight in the scene), it's not going to have a different property of that type.

We can't use the old method of creating two Genesis figures and conforming one to other, for as soon as you use one of the main shapes (such as M5, Hitomi, Jason, etc), the proportions go completely out of whack.

What I do in this case is, after loading the first Genesis and creating the M5 textured character, is to simply load another Genesis, switch it to the M4 maps, apply the Jepe body hair, and apply the push modifier to it which gives it the same Mesh offset parameter for the second Genesis (the bodyhair one) as you get with a geommetry shell. Then just copy the shape from the M5 Genesis to the M4-bodyhair Genesis and dial out the Mesh offset the same as I woould with the Geometry shell. Then I DON'T fit/conform the bodyhair Genesis to the M5 character Genesis. After posing or re-posing the M5 Genesis character, just copy the pose to the M4-Bodyhair Genesis. It only takes a moment to copy the pose, and the M4-Bodyhair Genesis just sits round the M5 just like the geometry shell would. Because it's not conformed, there's no problem with scaling proportions getting doubled and all that.

Yes it's a few clicks to load the second Genesis and apply the push modifier and copy the shape from the first; and it's a click or two to copy the pose from character to bodyhair after a re-pose of the character. and you are not getting the resource saving of the shell over the secon Genesis. But it's really easy to do, takes less time to do than it's taken me to describe it, and works perfectly for having the effect of the shell but with different UVs. Specifically putting a Jepe M4 Hairy over an M5 textured and morphed Genesis was the first thing I did with the push modifier function after discovering it and what it did wwhen it first appeared in a beta.

As it stands right now, the geometry shell doesn't have much in the way of use that couldn't already be done using the Layered Image Editor.

I'm afraid I don't agree with that at all. With the LIE you have to create displacement maps to lift e.g. body hair over the surface, and even then the hair is in effect 'stuck' to the surface; with the geometry shell (or a second Genesis used as a 'suit' via the push modifier) you don't need to make a displacement map and e.g. hairs can be above the surface shadowing beneath according to the light angle. With the LIE you may have overlayed the diffuse map over the top of a base, but the whole surface has the same surface shader type, specularity settings etc; with the shell, you can apply a completely different shader, never mind just material settings, to the surfaces on the shell. With the LIE you can't use the UberArea Light on the surface and still have a normally colored and shadered surface while having an even colored glow emanating from a figure or prop. With the LIE you can't produce a forcefield surface around a figure or prop. And with the LIE you can't have something like clothes colliding with an overlaying displaced outward component rather than the 'zero' displacement of the surface.

It's possible the geometry shell doesn't have any particular use for anything you want to render at the moment; but it certainly has many possible uses for other things others may want to do.

I would like to know before this potentially fucks up my entire project directories.

What does it do to the existing content that was installed with the previous versions? Does it uninstall those as well? Which content directories does it remove? Since I have multiple copies of the default content.

I'd like to know the impact I am dealing with.

Wewll, the first problem is that 4.5 and 4.0 use the same preferences files, Registry entries etc, but there have been changes in options and suchlike. So if you leave 4.0 and install and run 4.5, then run 4.0, 4.0 will be very confused by reading its settings and preferences and states from files and registry entries that have all sorts of 4.5 entries in that it doesn't understand. And if you manage to sort thaat out and get 4.0 back with all its settings and preferences and states right and close, then start 4.5 again, 4.5 will read the redone 4.0 preferences and settings and states, and you'll find the new 4.5 menu entries and options and tools and whatnot will have vanished from the GUI. And that'll happen each time you switch between the two.

As for content, installing 4.5 and letting it uninstall 4.0 (which you should) will ONLY remove the DS Default content (base Genesis, Journyer scout etc that was installed by all the 4.0 DS installers)) and should not touch ANY of your other content - e.g. Genesis Evolution morphs ot anything else. The new separate Genesis basic content installer will then replace the base Genesis etc in the slightly upgraded 4.5 .duf format, and you shouldn't actually notice any change to your conent at all.

Note that through the 4.0 and 4.5-beta versions, DAZ were tweaking the new dsf and duf file formats, so including the base content in the DS installers was reasonable as quite often it had been changed slightly. Now (at least supposedly) the new duf and dsf file formats have been locked down in their final form, so there will no longer be changes to the base Genesis etc content files as versions of 4.5 progress, so there's no reason to include them in further DS updates, just bulking out the DS download file and having them uninstalled and reinstalled each time DS is updated for no reason whatsoever.

I would like to know before this potentially fucks up my entire project directories.

What does it do to the existing content that was installed with the previous versions? Does it uninstall those as well? Which content directories does it remove? Since I have multiple copies of the default content.

I'd like to know the impact I am dealing with.

Wewll, the first problem is that 4.5 and 4.0 use the same preferences files, Registry entries etc, but there have been changes in options and suchlike. So if you leave 4.0 and install and run 4.5, then run 4.0, 4.0 will be very confused by reading its settings and preferences and states from files and registry entries that have all sorts of 4.5 entries in that it doesn't understand. And if you manage to sort thaat out and get 4.0 back with all its settings and preferences and states right and close, then start 4.5 again, 4.5 will read the redone 4.0 preferences and settings and states, and you'll find the new 4.5 menu entries and options and tools and whatnot will have vanished from the GUI. And that'll happen each time you switch between the two.

As for content, installing 4.5 and letting it uninstall 4.0 (which you should) will ONLY remove the DS Default content (base Genesis, Journyer scout etc that was installed by all the 4.0 DS installers)) and should not touch ANY of your other content - e.g. Genesis Evolution morphs ot anything else. The new separate Genesis basic content installer will then replace the base Genesis etc in the slightly upgraded 4.5 .duf format, and you shouldn't actually notice any change to your conent at all.

Note that through the 4.0 and 4.5-beta versions, DAZ were tweaking the new dsf and duf file formats, so including the base content in the DS installers was reasonable as quite often it had been changed slightly. Now (at least supposedly) the new duf and dsf file formats have been locked down in their final form, so there will no longer be changes to the base Genesis etc content files as versions of 4.5 progress, so there's no reason to include them in further DS updates, just bulking out the DS download file and having them uninstalled and reinstalled each time DS is updated for no reason whatsoever.

Thank you for the info. You know it would be nice if DAZ provided this... Instead of, you know, a year old installation information PDF with no information of any value in it.

I don't intend installing DS4.5 until everything is working OK. I will stick with DS4 Pro.

What I would like to know is, will new Genesis stuff still work in DS4? I don't want to buy Stephanie 5 or any new clothing items for Genesis, only to find they will not work in DS4.

DS4 Pro supports the .dsf file format for the morph and clothing data files in the datta directory - but doesn't support the .duf format user-facing files that you would see and click on in the content library.

That should mean that for new Genesis morphs, the morphs would appear in the property pane of a loaded base Genesis and would work if dialled from there; but any files supposed to be in the content library for you to click on to load a Genesis with the morph applied wouldn't work (or even show up, I would suppose). And you wouldn't see or be able to use the files in the content library to load Genesis clothing, hair etc that's supplied with DS4.5 .duf files in the content library.

At least some of the (recent) products in the store do list the filetypes used in the product description, usually in brackets by the clothing item name, like (hr2, .dsf) for a hair that's supplied in both Poser and DS4 native format, or (.duf) for a Genesis DS 4.5 item. Basically, if there's a .duf file listed, it won't work in DS4 (although if there's also a Poser filetype, that version should appear and load in DS4).

The Body Morphs are at 1.4, but they had two different version of 1.4 Body Morphs. The older ones have a different size in the PC version. The current 1.4 Body Morphs installers are this size.PC 7.26 MB / Mac 16.0 MB,

Hello, I reset my downloads as per instructed but when I try to download the Daz Studio 4 file, the file name still reads: 4.0.3.47
I am currently running the 4.5 beta release, and it works well, but according to this post it seems the ACTUAL release of 4.5 is now available. If that's true, why am I still seeing the 4.0 version in my available downloads?

I'm sorry if I missed something obvious, I tend to confuse easily. :red:

I'm afraid I don't agree with that at all. With the LIE you have to create displacement maps to lift e.g. body hair over the surface, and even then the hair is in effect 'stuck' to the surface; with the geometry shell (or a second Genesis used as a 'suit' via the push modifier) you don't need to make a displacement map and e.g. hairs can be above the surface shadowing beneath according to the light angle. With the LIE you may have overlayed the diffuse map over the top of a base, but the whole surface has the same surface shader type, specularity settings etc; with the shell, you can apply a completely different shader, never mind just material settings, to the surfaces on the shell. With the LIE you can't use the UberArea Light on the surface and still have a normally colored and shadered surface while having an even colored glow emanating from a figure or prop. With the LIE you can't produce a forcefield surface around a figure or prop. And with the LIE you can't have something like clothes colliding with an overlaying displaced outward component rather than the 'zero' displacement of the surface.

It's possible the geometry shell doesn't have any particular use for anything you want to render at the moment; but it certainly has many possible uses for other things others may want to do.

My fault for not clarifying, I was referring more to the advertised use of blending textures between geografted areas, which you can see written in the opening post of this topic. It's currently impossible to use the geometry shell to blend the textures of geografted segments, the result being no different to if you use LIE. To put it simply, it can't be used for its advertised purpose (and if it can, Daz really should explain how).

Yes, the geometry shell has various other uses, as long as you have compatible textures/masks for each possible UV map (Basic Male, Basic Female, V4, V5, M4, M5, Anubis, Hitomi, not to mention the ones that'll be added in future products like the recently announced Stephanie 5). Depending on the effect you want to achieve (such as body hair, hideous growths, cuts and bruises, second skin clothing, glowing body parts, etc) you will need to be very selective about which UV map you use. Keep in mind that your method of manually copying a pose to a second Genesis wouldn't work too well for animation, something which i'm hoping to get into more in the future. Fortunately we do now have some 3D body hair for Genesis to choose from. Although obviously more memory intensive than a texture, they can at the least be used with any character without worry.

My fault for not clarifying, I was referring more to the advertised use of blending textures between geografted areas, which you can see written in the opening post of this topic. It's currently impossible to use the geometry shell to blend the textures of geografted segments, the result being no different to if you use LIE. To put it simply, it can't be used for its advertised purpose (and if it can, Daz really should explain how).

As I said in my first post in this thread about it, I have no idea where that geografting bit suddenly came from. I only visit the forums intermittently now, but when the geometry shell (and push modifier) first appeared in the RCs some months ago, there was some discussion about it in the forums, including some posts from a DAZ staffer or two, IIRC, and absolutely nothing was said about it having anything to do with geografting. It was all about the kind of uses I was mentioning in the earlier posts here. If MPEII hadn't been taken down by hackers, there's a thread there I started too several months ago about its use for e.g. using Jepe's M4 Hairy etc textures (including using the push modifier on a second Genesis to use his M4 Hairy maps with an M5 Genesis) which Jepe himself replied to. AFAIR, the only mention of geografting in all the posts about the geometry shell back then was me checking that the shell did include the genetalia if created on a Genesis that had the genetalia geografted on. I certainly had no impression at all that the geometry shell function was created specifically for anything to do with geografting, and was very surprised to read that bit in the announcement post at the start of this thread.

Yes, the geometry shell has various other uses, as long as you have compatible textures/masks for each possible UV map (Basic Male, Basic Female, V4, V5, M4, M5, Anubis, Hitomi, not to mention the ones that'll be added in future products like the recently announced Stephanie 5). Depending on the effect you want to achieve (such as body hair, hideous growths, cuts and bruises, second skin clothing, glowing body parts, etc) you will need to be very selective about which UV map you use.

Just for the sake of any newbies reading this, I'd just like to emphasise that the geometry shell (and push modifier) function isn't only a Genesis thing. You can create a geometry shell on any figure or prop. In my viewport at the moment I'm just contemplating a figure starship and a prop starship (both loaded from Poser files) with geometry shells around them. You can create them on vehicles, Gen 4 figures, gen 3 figures, swords ... whatever.

Keep in mind that your method of manually copying a pose to a second Genesis wouldn't work too well for animation, something which i'm hoping to get into more in the future. Fortunately we do now have some 3D body hair for Genesis to choose from. Although obviously more memory intensive than a texture, they can at the least be used with any character without worry.

I haven't really got into animations. But if you create an animation for, say, an M5 figure, then load another Genesis, apply a push modifier and M4 UVs and an M4 Hairy map and then copy figure on the M5 character and paste shape to the M4 Hairy genesis, surely if you then copy exactly the same animation from the M5 character Genesis to the M4 Hairy Genesis, the M4 Hairy Genesis will just move along with the M5 character Genesis and stay surrounding it with hair when you run the whole animation, won't it?